Among the many objectives science has, one of the most ambitious is to decipher and to
comprehend the complexities of our world. Systems, categories, rules, and criteria order
whatever we encounter in our habitat. Beyond their intended purpose these classifications
produce hierarchies expressing dominant ideologies and power structures. The following films
focus on the taxonomy natural sciences apply to establish normative orders for plants and
creatures alike: they range from medieval to contemporary times, from educational film to seed
archives, and from animal trial to beasts of all sorts.
Archival footage from a children's science film is digitally stylized in a poignant portrayal of innocence and power, care and feeding, curiosity and control, prodding and pinching, science and sensitivity, of small things with big implications, of the shifting sensibilities of right and wrong over time and in the best intentions of any given moment, PRELUDE is a digital nostalgia of our tactile relationship with nature and the world and the timeless sweetness and unintended cruelties of loving things.… >>>
Premiere:
World Premiere
Silo 5, once the largest granary in the world, was celebrated by Le Corbusier as the building of the future. Now it is an industrial ruin and monument to colonial global exploitation. The video work takes the abandoned Montreal granary as an opportunity to approach different gestures, recipes and technologies of preservation and collection. Seen from the perspective of a near future, collections expose themselves as accumulations of gaps and omissions. These voids become resonating bodies, having the potential to open up spaces for other practices of intermediate storage.… >>>
The film explores the medieval practice of putting animals on trial. This history of colonial law-making forged political and sometimes profane relationships between humans and animals. Bambitchell's new essayistic work reimagines common perceptions of legal history and, in doing so, produces a world where past and present, fiction and non-fiction, human and animal fuse.… >>>
- Director: Bambitchell / Sharlene Bamboat & Alexis Mitchell
A monster film with no monsters. Inspired by the existence of taxonomies of monsters at the heart of Early Modern European science, the film explores and reinterprets a way of seeing the natural world that is almost impossible to imagine from today’s vantage point. Early Modern naturalists were guided by a logic in which scientific truths were discovered through visual analogy. The word “monster” comes from the Latin “monstrare”, meaning to show, to reveal, to demonstrate. A DEMONSTRATION picks up on these themes in a poetic exploration of the boundaries of sight and the metamorphosis of form.… >>>
- Director: Beny Wagner,Sasha Litvintseva
